PetaPixel

There’s a brand new service in town that’s looking to help out those photographers who choose to share their images for free with the online community. Powered by Creative Commons, the new website Dotspin uses a hashtag and voting system to determine a photo’s quality and give the photographer a chance to earn credits towards rewards such as restaurant gift cards.

Here’s a quick video intro from the company:

When you tag a photo in Instagram or Twitter using the #dotspin hashtag, it is automatically watermarked with a colored dot and licensed Creative Commons attribution. Dotspin users will then begin to see it in the “Vote-O-Matic” section of the Dotspin website, pitted side-by-side against other similarly hashtagged photos.

The more votes you get, the more “dotcredits” you earn. Those, in turn, can be used to purchase rewards that are provided by the website in partnership with Amazon — although the website hopes other suppliers and brands will jump onboard once the idea takes off.

The advantages for photographers are two fold. For one, if you chose to connect your Instagram or Twitter to the Dotspin website itself, you’ll be able to see voting statistics on the photos you have shared. You’ll also be able to further specify exactly which CC license you would like applied to your pics.

The second advantage is, obviously, the opportunity to earn dotcredits and possibly use them on rewards. If you habitually license your photos CC, you aren’t expecting to get anything for them in the first place; Dotspin allows you to get feedback and possibly earn a free app download or gift card in the process.

The website was only launched in May and is still technically in Beta. For now, the challenge will be keeping enough rewards “in stock” to keep pace with the sheer number of photographers signed up with/using Dotspin. Co-founder Gastón Paladini wouldn’t say exactly how many have already signed up when he spoke with Photopreneur, but he did say that the number is “much more than we thought.”

To learn more about the service or to sign-in with a Twitter or Instagram account and check it out for yourself, head over to Dotspin by clicking here or start tagging your photos with the #dotspin hashtag. Who knows, your freely-shared photos may wind up earning you a $25 gift card to Starbucks or a free Fruit Ninja app download.